Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the author and editor of over 22 books. She has written three novels: When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, Magdalena, and The Newspaper Widow. Her recent books include her Selected Short Stories and Growing Up Filipino 3: New Stories for Young Adults. Her work has been translated into Turkish, Finnish, Greek, Japanese, Portuguese, among others.
She received an Outstanding Individual Award from Cebu, a California Arts Council Fellowship, a Brody Arts Fund, several travel grants from the US Embassy, National Book Award, Cirilo Bautista Prize, travel grant from the National Book Development Board, and other awards.
She taught at UCLA, USC, California State Summer School for the Arts, and the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension. She served as Executive Board member and Officer of PEN, PAAWWW (Pacific Asian American Women Writers West), Arts & Letters at the Cal State University LA, PAWWA (Philippine American Woman Writers and Artists), among others.
She also runs a small press, PALH (Philippine American Literary House).

Her official website is https://ceciliabrainard.com